mshute@cs.man.ac.uk (Malcolm Shute) (06/22/91)
[This thread appears to have been redirected here from comp.arch in midstream... --JoSH] In article <22157@brahms.udel.edu> gdtltr@brahms.udel.edu (gdtltr@limbo.org (The Befuddled One)) writes: > It seems to me that the main problem along these lines is describing >the problem and the desired goal. This is the sort of problem which G.A. (genetic algorithms) are supposed to tackle. So, like you, I'd agree that computers do more and more to design computers. As you also hint, they are already doing it... today's sophisticated CAD does more to design computers than yesterday's did. In the same way, today's compilers do more to write their own assembler programs (from the abstract ideas which the human sketches out to them) than yesterday's did. Are these really 'designing' off their own bat, though? Of course not! What good would a machine be to mankind if it refused to do what the human operators commanded it to do... a machine, afterall, is built by humans to do the tiresome work *for* the humans. We will always want the machine (the computer which designs computers in this case) to act under the direction of human guidance. Returning to the thread at the top of this posting, though: If GA is to be used, the potential, new computer designs need to evolve in some sort of environment in which natural selection is allowed to work. This is already provided, of course... we all know that 'the market place' represents the ideal jungle in which to test out the survival of the fittest. The GA program therefore needs to be connected to a good behavioural simulator, and a good economics simulator, and left to run. (The problems with this, are how to connect the behavioural simulator to the economics one (what makes a good, marketable processor?); and the slow operation of GA). If you subscribe to the Richard Dawkins view of the universe, then this process is already well underway. The cycle admittedly presently contains some pesky ant-like creatures (called humans), organised into structures which they call Intel, MIPS, Motorola, Inmos, etc... But gradually newer and fitter processors *are* evolving. (See a thread which is currently underway in sci.nanotech on the subject of 'meme's). As I have said above, I don't believe that the human component will ever be removed from this system. By giving the tiresome work to the machine, the human designer is freed to soar higher into the design space, devoting his/her braincells to higher levels of the design (at each new generation of CAD, the fontier rises one stage further, the machine takes on a higher level of the design, and the human is freed to rise one stage higher too). No commercial organisation could afford to exclude the human member from the human-machine partnership, not least because the former must always be the team leader! I'm sorry for the long and rambling nature of this posting. I'm in the middle of marking a pile of examination scripts, and needed to hit back at the rest of the world in general! -- Malcolm SHUTE. (The AM Mollusc: v_@_ ) Disclaimer: all